Giant fire radius, plus the airblast reduction is useless because most pyros using that weapon don't use airblast anyway :/

Don't all flamethrowers have the same range?

yes they do. but the back burner use to do 10% more damage in general which is why a lot of people used it and others mainly other pyros hated it. but back burner useres practicly gave up air blast for fire damage and when vaulve got rid of the bonus damage they screwed all backburners. so in short it is now UP

Backburner is a different way to play, i've seen competitive players taking down key targets or entire team with it although you can only airblast 4 times.Oh and Backburner's fire wasn't nerfed, the Flamethrower's one raised.

Airblast having higher cost is barely a downside compared to 100% critical hits from back attacks. Only 50 ammo taken? Ammo is almost everywhere to grab. They need to balance this with a fair downside, but a fair upside.

It's kinda outperformed by the phlog for it's actual purpose (ambushing) and kinda serves as a buffed flamer with a higher airblast cost.

compared to the stock flame thrower, it's an upgrade, compared to the sheer utility of the degreaser and the survivability and raw power of the phlog, it's a sidegrade. There aren't a lot of maps out there were ammo is scarce enough to make the backburner hurt on ammo.

Besides, for the longest time I've thought the Backburner had a slightly longer reach than the other flamethrowers, never tested it but, always kinda looked like it. It's a very tricky thing to balance though, I think it's alright the way it is atm.

I don't view it as game breakingly OP but it is "that one weapon" for pyro (that one weapon being the clearly best weapon) as it gets random crits and guarnteed crits if you can get behind someone and usually if a pyro is behind you you're already dead also the downside is barely an issue except for hardcore airblasters.